Pandan Cake

Pandan (Screwpine Leaves) Cake

It has been called the Asian Vanilla, the green leaves of the screwpine emits a sweet flavour, mostly used in Asian desserts or even some savoury dishes. It grows in a low bush in tropical and subtropical weather ( here's more on pandan  on wikipedia).

Most households in Malaysia will have a pandan bush as it grows almost unassisted without much fuss.

The Malays use them to flavour their Nasi Lemak, Sweets and the perennial favourite the KEK Pandan or Pandan Cake.

In case you do not have access to pandan leaves you may used pandan flavouring.

Ingredients

250 gms butter (softened to room temp)

150 gms castor sugar

4 eggs

60 ml coconut cream with a pinch of salt

10-15 pandan leaves blended with 1/2 cup water (strained and discard pulp)

2-3 drops green coloring

30g coconut flakes

240 gm self raising flour

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Oil/butter then place baking paper on a 9 inch baking pan. Pre heat oven to 

170 C.

Beat butter and sugar until creamy. Add eggs one by one and mix well each 

time. Add vanilla essence, coconut flakes and green colouring.

Add pandan juice to the coconut cream. 

Fold in flour and the coconut cream alternately mixing well each time.  Pour 

into pan and bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the centre comes 

out clean.

Dust with icing sugar for decoration.

Bubur Pulut Hitam (Sticky Rice Pudding)

Talk about comfort food, this would rank in my top ten dessert, maybe because mum used to make this all the time. Each bite would remind me of warm childhood memories, and how blessed we all are with His Mercy and Bounty.

Best of all, its sooo easy to make, although you would need to have pandan(screwpine) leaves. And if you didnt have any fresh ones like what I have in the backyard, chances are you can easily source them frozen from any Asian grocer, where you will be getting the black glutinous rice anyway. Just in case you are wondering, this black variety of rice is unmilled hence the colour remains black or deep purple.

FYI, Glutinous rice does not contain dietary gluten (i.e. does not contain glutenin and gliadin), and thus should be safe for gluten-free diets.(Source: Wikipedia)

Recipe

1 cup black Glutinous rice
4 cups water or more
1 pandan leave (knotted)
half cup sugar

Topping
Coconut cream
Pinch of salt

Tip: Before boiling the rice, soaking it in water will allow any grits to float to water surface, and you can easily skim them off. Leave to soak for 10-20 minutes to reduce cooking time. (if you're in hurry, you can skip this step)

Add rice & pandan leave into a pot of water and simmer on low heat until the rice is soft and a pudding like consistency is achieved. Add sugar and stir.

Top with coconut cream with a pinch of salt, preferably chilled.

Enjoy!